Proceedings Paper

We discuss the application of phase space distributions, such as the Wigner distribution,
to study wave propagation in a dispersive medium. We show how the classical and quantum
methods for particle motion can be applied to the solution of the wave equation. We derive an
explicit evolution equation for the Wigner distribution and discuss a number of methods to solve
it. We also discuss the application of phase space distributions to the evolution of noise fields in a
dispersive medium.